Day 3 of 2020 Alaska Trip, Harding Ice Field

Third day of our Alaska trip. I would be hiking Harding Ice Field Trail, the most popular hiking trail near Seward, that ended with me stepping onto the expansive ice field.

Harding Ice Field

Unfortunately, my friend wasn’t feeling very well after previous day’s boat trip, so I would be doing this hike alone while he rested in the Airbnb room.
The day started with a constant drizzle, not the most ideal condition for hiking. I had been counting on the weather forecast that the rain would abate in the afternoon. On the other hand, the trail wasn’t very demanding, so I chose to hold an umbrella for most of the hike, despite wearing rain-repellent jackets.

Trailhead Parking Lot
Despite the drizzly weather, there were quite some people setting off for the glaciers today.

At 9:45 in the morning, I left the parking lot and started my hike.
Here’s GPS tracking of the day:

 
Trail

The first 600m of trail was paved, in excellent condition like this. There were markers along the trail (and the access road to Exit Glacier) marking perimeter of glaciers at various years, showing how much it had receded.

Pavilion
At the end of paved trail, for people to rest. Despite it’s only 600m from trailhead.

At the fork of trails towards the end of pavement, I opted for a 1.5km roundtrip detour to an overlook of Exit Glacier.

 
 
Trail to Exit Glacier

Exit Glacier

The overlook used to be right above the edge of Exit Glacier in 2005. Since then the glacier had retreated, and now the overlook was over a small creek from the glacier.

 
Outwash Plain
Where water from Exit Glacier flows into.

 
Trail at Exit Glacier
Much narrower. This led to a different overlook slightly uphill.

 


Exit Glacier

After that, I headed back to the fork of trails, for Harding Ice Field.

Harding Icefield Trail Registration

Anyone entering Harding Icefield Trail needed to fill out such a form, which was located in a box and, despite plastic protections, got pretty wet from the day’s rain.

 
 
 
Trail

The trail to Harding Ice Field was steeper with elevation gain, involving a few switchbacks. It continued for about 2.2km in the woods, with typical trail condition like this. Shielded by the trees, rain wasn’t too much a concern for this leg of the trip, amazingly, nor was mud on the trail.

Mushrooms

 
 
Berries

Trail on Rocks

This was the most difficult bit of trail to emergency shelter (which showed the trail’s not difficult at all), where for the only time I used my hands during hiking.

 
 
 
Trail

At about 2.9km from trailhead (ignoring the Exit Glacier detour), one emerged from the tree line. From now on, only shallow bushes could survive on this mountainous terrain.

 
 
Plants

That’s where things got exciting as one got the first glimpse of Harding Ice Field along the trail.

 
Harding Ice Field

Together with views of outwash plains and distant mountains, that’s where one came from.

 
Outwash Plains and Distant Mountains

 
 
Trail

 

Trail
Winding its way through a series of switchbacks.

At the vantage point (“top of cliff”) just after the series of switchback, a group of tents were overlooking the valley of Exit Glacier. Later I learned there were a group of Texans making their annual visit to national parks. This year due to COVID, flights were cheap and they got to come here to Alaska.
That’s also the group scouting out the way beyond emergency shelter, following the footsteps of whom I would come down to Harding Ice Field later.

 

Tents

 
Harding Ice Field

After “top of cliff”, views of Harding Icefield just got better by the footstep.

 
Trail

That’s also where terrain briefly became too harsh for any plants to survive, and the trail temporarily crossed a field of rocks.

Plants
Seemingly growing out of nowhere from the rocks.

Luckily, weather had been on my side. Since coming out of tree line, rain had been dwindling down, so I packed my umbrella and had one less thing to worry about while enjoying this scenery.

 
Trail

It’s sensational hiking among this tundra, seeing life flourishing in the toughest of environments.

 
Flowers

Exit Glacier from Trail

 
Creek

Rocks
A creek flowing underneath this amazing texture.

Misty Mountains

A rugged fortress of rocks, as if an army of undead could come charging out of it at any moment.

 
Trail

For the last 800m or so to emergency shelter, the terrain was so hostile, there was no sign of life. It was hard to follow the beaten trail as the field of rocks looked rather homogeneous. Anyway, going off trail didn’t matter that much as the rolling hills were gentle and forgiving, and the emergency shelter was a constant sight ahead.

 
Creek

Except for crossing this creek. It’s easiest to cross it following the trail, despite its flow was shallow and crossing it elsewhere wasn’t difficult at all.

 
Barren Landscape

Final Stretch to Emergency Shelter

Finally, at 1pm, 6.5km and 2.5 hours from trailhead (excluding Exit Glacier detour), I was at the emergency shelter, end of trail on the map. That’s where I caught up with the group of aforementioned Texans.

After a field lunch, I followed them down to Harding Ice Field.

Distant Outwash Plain

Hello Glaciers

 
Exit Glacier on Mountain

Harding Ice Field

Trail to Harding Ice Field

After the emergency shelter, there’s a 1.2km downhill to the edge of Harding Ice Field. This was the most technical/difficult section of the trail, with steep declines on loose gravel (below). In addition, wind was strong near the ice field due to temperature gradient. Still, nothing I couldn’t handle.

 
Hill before Harding Ice Field

Harding Ice Field

 
Mountains beyond Harding Ice Field

Harding Ice Field

Edge of Ice Field
Where ice meets rock.

At 2pm, I followed the group of Texans and made my way onto Harding Ice Field.

Standing on Ice

Without microspikes, the ice surface was extremely slippery. Quite a lot of us slipped on the ice, me included.

Hole in Ice
Created by some unlucky guy.

Abyss
I couldn’t see the whole depth of it.

On the plus side, it’s a sensational feeling to be part of such expansive ice field, to experience its breadth, despite low-lying clouds that day limiting visibility.

Harding Ice Field

 
Wrinkles on Ice

 

People on Harding Ice Field

 
Crevasses

However, after two slips in a mere 20 minutes on the ice, I decided the ice field was too dangerous for me, and headed back onto solid rocks.

Harding Ice Field

Sole Explorer

Harding Ice Field

 
Ice on Mountains

By the time I got back to the emergency shelter, it was 3pm. Not bad that I had a lunch, went to the ice field, snapped lots of photos and came back, in a total of 2 hours.
After that, I traced my footsteps back downhill.

 
Marmot

A sharp-eyed gentleman from the Texan group spotted this marmot enjoying its day in the bushes.

As I was making my way back, the morning continuous drizzle turned into periods of stronger showers, making the trip unpleasant at times. But overall, since the rain could be handled by an umbrella, afternoon’s better as that umbrella wasn’t needed all the time. Probably that’s the reason why I ran into lots of people on my descent, but not many during ascent.

I didn’t know whether that’s correlated with the rain, but I seemed to run into many more bugs in the woods during my descent, which certainly spoiled the experience a bit.

And finally, I was back at the trailhead parking lot at 5:40pm.

Since it’s still early in the day, after leaving Kenai Fjords National Park boundary, I stopped at a roadside turnout with views of distant Exit Glacier, and snapped a few photos there.

Exit Glacier

Resurrection River and Outwash Plains

And here’s a video of my drone travelling up and down Resurrection River.

Finally, after picking up my friend at Airbnb house, we headed for downtown Seward for dinner. Rain had stopped by then, so we could afford to sit outside while enjoying the breeze.

Dinner
Fish and chips, seafood was a constant theme at this port city.

Day 3 of 2020 Alaska Trip, Harding Ice Field by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.